Friday 10th June
Travelling a fair way today and with not a little trepidation (trepidation, oooh that's a fancy word). Basically, Broome has always been on the list as a must visit on this trip, but people's opinion of the place are varied. Some love it and it's only distance that stops them coming back, others say there are much nicer places to visit in this part of the world. Well we will soon have our own opinions to add.
Along the way we do our good deed for the day when we stop for a family broken down on the side of the road. Obviously I was not going to be able to render any mechanical assistance but we were able to make a phone call for them at the next roadhouse to get someone to help. Going the extra yard, as always, we even got someone heading the other way to let them know that the message had been passed on. I have already made one bible reference this month so I am loathe to overdo it but the parable of the good samaritan springs to mind. (Luke 10:25-37) To be honest I think the good samaritan may have put in a little more, but it's the thought that counts.
In a sign that good deeds do not go unrewarded, when Skippy the suicide kangaroo threw himself in front of MM the brakes worked and we pulled up (just) in time.
Shortly after that we stopped at a roadside stop for lunch and for Steve to readjust his underwear.
Arriving in Broome we discover it gets its name from the aboriginal word “broome” (obviously) meaning “town without planning”. That is, the place is spread out all over the place, with bits of the town on Roebuck Bay, bits over by Cable Beach, a shopping complex in between and a port and jetty on the point between the bays.
So a quick lap of the town(s) and a top up of groceries at Woolies and we checked in to the Palm Grove caravan Park. No vacancies tonight so the booking ahead turned out to be very good advice.
Having set up and settled in a bit we decided we walk down and check out the fabled Cable Beach.
Strolling along, minding our business when blow me down (isn't that a quaint expression, you don't hear that very often these days) who should we see but Mike and Bron Fitzgerald. Yep Jilly's mum and dad. Amazingly, they have just arrived today as well and are heading off on an outback adventure in the morning. Just goes to show you kids, your mum was right (not about wearing clean underwear, in case you get hit by a bus. I think it's pretty much been proven that if you get hit by a bus no matter how clean your underwear was when you left home you are going to have problems post bus impact). No your mum was right when she said “always be on your best behaviour you never know who you might bump into”.
We were so excited we had a couple of drinks before dinner. Which incidentally was a beautiful piece of steak, washed down with some Swan Valley red wine (thanks Mark).
We are also extremely pleased to finally have internet and phone reception again after 4 or 5 days without. To celebrate we surfed the web, called a few people and finished off the night with an hour conversation with the Rowes comparing holidays. We won, they only went away for 5 weeks this is day 221 for us :-)
Saturday 11th – Saturday 18th June
Well the first thing that springs to mind is that the weather was very un-Broome like. Now I know I am not going to illicit a lot of sympathy from people in Melbourne who if they are not freezing to death are being blown away in the wind. But, we have expectations here on the West Coast people. Now it's not to say we were van bound but it is extremely windy and quite cool over night. In fact it's cooling down quite quickly once the sun goes down (before 6:00pm) and then dropping into single digit temperatures overnight. Pleasant enough during the day though, in the mid 20's and the wind is dying down in the afternoon. Mind you we both went out and bought hoodies in the middle of the week so we could eat breakfast outside.
Steve managed a couple of morning walks along the beach and we did stroll down to Cable Beach in the afternoons for the sunset “show”. Mostly avoided the “show” on the nudey beach. I wish we had missed the show completely as it consisted entirely of old men! With the exception of one topless sunbather. I like to think she was French (for no apparent reason).
A couple of things that have been on the list for Broome from the start were: camel ride on Cable Beach and hire a motor scooter. Luckily we managed both.
We even managed to tie the two activities together because when we hired the scooter, for 48 hours, we got a two for one offer on the camel ride. Bargain. The scooter was fun and enabled us to check out the town a little easier than driving around in MM. Mind you I am convinced that Di's food processor at home has a bigger more powerful motor. At one point we hit a head wind and couldn't quite manage 60 km/h. It didn't exactly pan out like a scene from Quadrophenia
Editors note: Quadrophenia a 1973 album by the Who later made into the 1979 movie. Incidentally, Sting's first movie role. It depicted the 1960's battles between the Rockers (riding large British motorcycles like Triumph & BSA) and the Mods (riding heavily tarted up scooters like Vespas and Lambrettas – refer photo in Liverpool blog entry).
The camel ride did not disappoint. Although at the end we were probably grateful we went for the half hour ride rather than the one hour. At least this way we came away with no chafing or bottom soreness. It also meant we made it to the sunset bar early enough to get a front row seat (not to mention an early cocktail).
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| Who's a pretty boy then? |
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Cute
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Editors note: We always estimated that Broome was going to be a little unkind to the budget and it did not disappoint. Two hours at the sunset bar and there's two days food budget gone. At this point it's a little hard to take the moral high ground when talking to Elke about her UK trip. :-)
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| Did someone say Tropical Paradise? |
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Our new travel buddies - Tony & Jo from Adelaide
Malcolm, don't tell me you know them ! |
Two other major positives also occurred this week:
I gave up trying to get both PCs connected to the internet the way they should work and just went out and gave Telstra more money and bought their new mobile wifi device. Amazingly it DID work and with only one phone call to help desk to get it activated.
We started on Jean Leary's fruit cake. The one that arrived in our food parcel to Perth. We love you Jean (and not just for your fruit cake xxx).
Obviously Broome is famous for it's pearls
and Di is famous for her shopping.
Not a good combination for keeping the budget on track. But in this case we survived. We did a couple of the pearl related tours:
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Di's hand,
$100,000 pearl
If this had sound you would hear Steve's scream |
The pearl lugger tour
which is basically a guided tour of a little museum in town. Again our ancestors do not come out well when we look at how people were treated in the pursuit of a quick buck.
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| Run Di, he's after you |
But it's a fascinating story:
natural pearls only occur once in every 5,000 oysters;
the main business was in the mother of pearl shell (for the button industry. Broome died for awhile in the 1930's after the invention of the plastic button);
the hard hat divers had a VERY high mortality rate (if the sharks or the bends didn't get you your own crew was likely to cut the air hose and abandon you if a storm blew in);
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| OK, does my belly look big in this hat? |
a Broome pearl revival occurred after the Japanese entrepreneur, Mr Mikimoto, invented the cultured pearl and one of his mates came to Broome to take advantage of the giant oysters.
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A metal hat, a suit like this
It's a good job pearl divers earned a lot of money
otherwise they would never have got a girlfriend
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The Willie Creek Pearl Farm tour
Picked up by a bus at the caravan park for the drive out to the farm. The farm is about 38km's out of town on some pretty dodgy dirt roads and tidal flats.
Learned about the delicate operation (literally) of seeding an oyster to produce a pearl
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| Is it just me or are oysters seriously unattractive? |
Learned that pearl seeders make a lot of money
Took a boat cruise up the creek (without a paddle, but with a motor)
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The tour guide said this was a kite
but we never saw the string |
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| People with jobs took a ride in the helicopter |
Another hit to the budget was Matso's brewery, a local icon and must see site. Unfortunately at $9 per schooner and $9 for Di's pear cider we didn't stay long.
Note to Elke: thanks for introducing your mum to pear cider, it was cheaper than the wine.
Of course one of the other things that Broome is famous for is the Staircase to the moon. A natural phenomenon caused by the full moon reflecting off the mud flats in Roebuck Bay, giving the appearance of stairs leading to the moon. Amazing how they come up with the name of these things isn't it? Also amazingly (or maybe not) neither of us, or any of our many advisors put two and two together and worked out that there needs to be a full moon and a low tide for you to witness the Staircase to the Moon. That is, it doesn't occur every day! Luckily our timing was ok (and we only had to extend our stay by one night) to get to see it. In fact we managed to check it out twice as the day before it was advertised to occur turned out to be a better view.
While we were in relative civilisation we also took MM in for a front wheel alignment as the front drivers side tyre was wearing badly (and unevenly). The guys at the alignment place even swapped the spare tyre onto the front for us. Which turned out to be money well spent as getting the spare tyre out from underneath the van, where it is stored, turned out to be a major production. I think if we get a flat I will be sitting on the side of the road waiting for the RAC (or Herb) to arrive!
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| That doesn't sound promising |
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| Should have believed the sign |
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If you are not going to read the signs
Get out ! |
Our opinion of Broome's relative civilisation took a dip when we went to the Satay Bar for dinner and a drink, with our new best friends Tony and Jo from Adelaide. It's hard to describe the Satay Bar. Maybe if you think of the bar scene in the original Star Wars movie, the bar with all the different alien life forms, you will start to get a picture. Not to mention that the only satay on the menu was chicken, and that was served as a large fillet of chicken covered in a satay sauce and served with rice. And chips and salad. Mind you the chicken was very tasty and the lady running the kitchen was lovely and the barmaid was over six feet tall. Come to think of it, it was very pleasant night. I even made a new friend, when a guy, who had allegedly left his wife back at their accommodation, decided to pull up a chair at our table and regale me with stories of his youth in Jersey. (The Channel Islands, not New York) all the while ignoring everyone else at our table. It's never an attractive girl is it Steve?
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| Someone's got a lovely bunch of coconuts |
So that was our week in Broome. Our opinion? Well it hasn't replaced Coral Bay as our favourite but it was a very pleasant and relaxing week. There's plenty to do. Cable Beach is a very nice beach and we would probably have enjoyed it even more if we a) had jobs and b) the weather had been just a little warmer. So the verdict – give it a try people, give it a try.
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| Anybody remember 20,000 Leagues under the sea? |
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Stinger relief station sounds impressive
Until you read the small print - Vinegar |
A new first for the blog - video (hopefully)
